Washington Department of Ecology is pressured to create anti-pollution regulations that would result in the loss of most family dairy farms in Whatcom County.

Lummi Shellfish Beds Close

On March 24, the Washington State Department of Health announced the conditional closure of 500 acres of Portage Bay closed to shellfish harvesting for half the year due to periodic higher levels of fecal coliform flowing from the Nooksack river. Portage Bay lies west of Portage Island, between the island and the Lummi Reservation on Gooseberry Point. The 1300 acres of Portage Bay provide commercial and subsistence shellfish harvesting for the Lummi tribe. The closure of this area represents a significant cultural and financial blow to the tribe and is of deep concern to farmers as well as the rest of the community. In a Seattle TV report and several local publications, blame has been placed on local dairy farmers as the primary cause of this closure. As we will see, these accusations are not fair or accurate.

Yakima lawsuits and Consent Decree

A Yakima Valley environmental group, Community Association to Restore the Environment (CARE), hired an environmental attorney from Oregon and sued four large dairy farms in the Yakima valley over water quality problems, specifically nitrates in the soil and groundwater. Despite clear evidence that water quality problems in the valley pre-dated these large dairies, the Spokane judge agreed with the environmental attorney that manure should no longer be treated as a beneficial product used as fertilizer, but treated as solid waste. If the judge’s decision holds, nutrients that are of increasing value in our community will fall under federal laws governing municipal waste.

At least $300,000 of the farmers’ money is going to pay the attorney who filed the suit.

In a follow up case, the farmers (now three as one farm went out of business) signed a Consent Decree with the EPA. According to the farmers, the document they signed was the least costly of the options they were given. The litigation and Consent Decree costs will total between $5 million and $10 million -- costs that could possibly be absorbed by only the largest farms.

The lawsuit and settlement resulted are requiring these farms to put in place hugely expensive new pollution controls that go above current state and federal standards. The sad fact is that because of longstanding nitrate problems in the Yakima Valley pre-dating the arrival of these farms, the cost of farming has increased dramatically with little to no benefit to the environment or the people who live in the valley.

How to drive Whatcom's family dairy farmers out of business

The chart shows the likely impact of new regulations being aggressively promoted by so-called environmental attorneys. While these regulations would do little to nothing to improve water quality, they would result in the majority of our family dairy farms leaving the county. Loss of our farmland and farmers is one of the greatest environmental disasters we can contemplate for our community.

Media Reports Place Blame on Dairy Farmers

A KOMO-TV investigative report placed the blame for water quality concerns, both fecal coliform and nitrates, squarely on dairy farmers. A Whatcom Watch article, written by environmental attorneys who have and will stand to gain from suing dairies in the state, strongly attacked dairy farmers as the source of water quality problems. Other media reports have repeated the accusations without attempting to establish the facts.

Potential new environmental regulations

The victorious attorney, who in court claimed that farmers “are killing America,” and other environmental attorneys are pressuring the Washington State Department of Ecology to create new regulations that meet the standards set in the Yakima case. Aside from ignoring the clear differences in the situation involved for all dairy farmers in the state, current estimates of these new regulations would cost $600 to $900 per cow for Whatcom dairy farmers. A survey of Whatcom dairy farmers showed that new regulations costing $250 per cow would take about forty percent of current farmers out of business. At $1000 per cow, nearly every family dairy farm in our community would be forced out. This would have a very large impact on our historical community and landscape.

Get the Facts: These pressures may force our family dairy farms out, but will NOT improve our water quality.

Water Quality is Critically Important

Clean water is in all of our interests. Farmers, their children, grandchildren and neighbors drink from the wells fed by groundwater. Care of the land, water and environment is more than a passion or interest for farmers--their futures depend on it. But dairy farmers are being unfairly targeted. They are not the problem, but as we will see in this document, they have been part of the solution for fifteen years and commit to being part of the solution going forward.

What you will learn on this website:

Since 1998 Whatcom County dairy farmers have made tremendous improvements in nutrient (manure) management

Continuing education, enforcement, new technologies such as bio-digesters and collaborative efforts through the Watershed Improvement Districts all demonstrate the commitment of our family farmers to continuous improvement

The number of dairy farms and dairy cows is declining, further reducing the contribution from dairy farms

Other factors known to contribute to water quality are increasing while dairy farm contribution is clearly declining. These factors include:

dramatic growth of urban sprawl into Whatcom farmland

urban growth across the border from Langley to Abbotsford

Increase in hobby farms

Increase in wildfowl population

The bottom line is that while agriculture in general, and dairy farming in Whatcom County in particular, is seen as a major contributor to water quality concerns, it is unfair and inappropriate to single out dairies as the source of current fecal coliform or nitrates contamination. Dairy farmers, unlike the other sources, are highly regulated and have taken numerous steps above and beyond the regulations to minimize water quality issues. Farmers have a strong interest in protecting our water and stand ready to actively participate in solutions that address all sources of contamination.